If your man’s condom fails in Texas, you’ll only have 20 weeks to decide whether to keep your unwanted pregnancy and only six clinics to help you.
Texas House Bill 2, which prohibits women from seeking abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, was passed last Friday by a vote of 19 to 11. It also requires abortions to take place in fully equipped surgical centers. Since only six of the state’s 42 clinics actually meet this requirement, many clinics will have to close down once the bill goes into effect on Aug. 1.
Although this is one of the strictest anti-abortion measures in the country, it did not come as a surprise victory.Texas already passed a law in 2011 that enforces a mandatory sonogram 24 hours before an abortion. Consequently, women seeking abortions must make at least two trips to the clinic. This law, along with HB 2, impedes the abortion process by increasing traveling expenses. USA Today predicts that for women in rural areas, the closest clinic could be as far as 350 miles away. Although the cost of an additional day or two might not seem like much, this kind of time and money are not something low-income women or teenage girls can afford.
Just because the resources aren’t there doesn’t mean the needs have diminished. On average, the 42 clinics in Texas perform about 72,500 abortions per year. Once the new law is enforced, the six remaining clinics would undoubtedly have an astronomical backlog of appointments, creating a lag time that might cause many to miss the 20-week deadline.
Needless to say, these kinds of restrictions will make many women desperate for an alternative solution. After the 24-hour waiting period was installed, reports showed that low-income women would cross the border between Mexico and the United States to buy misoprostol, a U.S. prescription drug that is officially used to treat gastric ulcers. However, because abortion is illegal outside of Mexico City, the medicine does not come with any instructions about the correct dosage and is often sold by untrained sales representatives. As such, many women are still pregnant after taking misoprostol. Some even suffer from heavy bleeding as a result of incorrect dosages.
Pro-life supporters have also overlooked the fact that these supposedly inadequate clinics are also the ones providing women with breast cancer screenings, pap smears, STD tests and contraceptives. These resources are already sparse due to cuts made in 2011 to Planned Parenthood, which forced more than 60 nonabortion clinics to close in Texas. Thus, it is no surprise that some have dubbed this anti-abortion trend a “war against women.”
Yet, Texan Republicans are recalcitrant.
“I will fight and I will fight and I will fight to protect my baby,” said Rep. Jason Villalba, R-Texas, a proponent of the bill, while dramatically waving a sonogram of his child at 13 weeks.
This begs the question: Why must he take away other women’s rights to protect his own child? If Villalba wants to save his baby, then he needs to talk to his wife. Unless he’s the father of the child, Villalba — and proponents of HB 2 alike — has no right to dictate what a woman should or shouldn’t do with her pregnancy. As its state slogan says, Texas might be “like a whole other country,” but it should at least give choice a chance!
Image Source: annharkness via Creative Commons
Anh Thai ponders about insidious world problems in her Tuesday blog. Contact Anh Thai at [email protected]